Rep. Will Hurd, R-Texas, said that he plans to track the IT modernization working capital fund, which will come from his Modernization Government Technology Act, on the FITARA scorecard. […]

Federal agencies are expected to submit their budget requests to Congress in September, detailing the funding they’ll need to meet their missions for fiscal year 2018. One trend that Congress can expect to see is requests for AI applications to automate cybersecurity processes, according to Thomas Jones, Federal systems engineer at Bay Dynamics. […]

If Federal agencies invest upfront in technologies to track fraud and improper payments, the government could end up saving enough money to pay back some of the national debt or stave off sequestration, according to Rep. Gerry Connolly, D-Va. […]

President Donald Trump’s proposed 2018 budget, released on May 23, provides for $228 million of IT modernization funding through the General Services Administration, as laid out in the Modernizing Government Technology Act that passed the House last week. […]

The Federal government will probably avoid a shutdown Friday as Congress continues to deliberate the final funding package. Federal IT initiatives will likely continue as usual in the event of a continuing resolution. […]

In the push to modernize legacy IT systems, agencies should be more strategic about which systems they choose to invest in, according to experts at Dell EMC World. […]

The Federal Railroad Administration gave $25 million in grants Tuesday to 11 companies to develop software that will help prevent train collisions. […]

Federal agencies need to adopt a standardized taxonomy for their data, according to authors of the report “Accelerating the Mission: Recommendations for Optimizing Federal Technology Cost and Value in the Age of FITARA.” The report proposes a set of Technology Business Management guidelines that would help agencies communicate with each other, Congress, and the private sector more effectively. […]

Government IT has a problem with planning better solutions, not coming up with ideas for those solutions, according to Federal CIO Tony Scott. “Ideas are not the problem in Washington; Washington is full of ideas. What Washington doesn’t have…is a good implementation plan for those ideas,” Scott said at a Citrix cybersecurity event. […]

The General Services Administration has announced the establishment of a third service branch, known as the Technology Transformation Service, that will be centered around GSA’s 18F digital service organization and will actively provide technology services to other government agencies. […]

Internal Revenue Service cybersecurity is woefully inadequate, and Congress is to blame, according to Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore. “Congress has sat back and watched while criminals have come in and preyed on taxpayers,” Wyden said at a Senate Finance Committee hearing. […]

Skilled workforce retention is a major problem for the Department of Defense’s IT issues, according to DOD CIO Terry Halvorsen, and salaries are partly to blame. […]

Federal agencies remain woefully behind on cybersecurity, according to the annual cybersecurity compliance report released Friday by the Office of Management and Budget. During the 2015 fiscal year, Federal agencies reported 77,183 cybersecurity incidents, a 10% increase over the incidents reported in 2014. Though the administration believes this increase may be attributed to improved detection […]

HealthCare.gov had a rocky rollout, but future Federal tech projects could learn a lot from its trials and successes, according to Erin Bliss at the HHS Office of Inspector General. She testified in front of the Senate Finance Committee alongside Seto Bagdoyan, the director of forensic audits at GAO. […]

Department of Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson told a Senate committee that the agency plans to use the final months of the Obama administration and the fiscal 2017 budget request to kick-start and expand a new operational focus on data and cybersecurity. […]

President Obama appointed two industry leaders to head his Cybersecurity National Action Plan. Tom Donilon, former National Security Adviser, will serve as the chairman of the committee and Sam Palmisano, former CEO of IBM, will serve as the vice chairman. […]

Alongside the release of the proposed 2017 budget, the White House released its annual Analytical Perspectives of that proposal. MeriTalk spotted five important trends in the IT world and describes how the Federal government plans to address them. […]

In a new report, the Government Accountability Office said some of the definitions provided to Federal agencies for reporting spending data under the Digital Accountability and Transparency Act of 2014 are inadequate, and “could lead to inconsistent reporting.” […]

Average IT spending growth has been down 1.5 percent since 2010, and Obama’s request is coming in high in hopes of ensuring he gets at least as much in 2016. Look for Congress to appropriate less than the president’s request, but more than the ceiling allowed by the four-year-old budget law. […]

The White House opened its wallet, according to the president’s 2016 federal budget proposal, and IT is the beneficiary. […]